CHAPTER 85
‘Who? Léonie?’ Meredith stammered, her thoughts short-circuiting for a moment.
‘Who? No, Dr O’Donnell. She’s already here. I’m in reception now. Can you come down and join us?’
Meredith threw a glance at the window, realising that her expedition to the lake would have to wait a little while longer.
‘Sure,’ she sighed. ‘Give me five.’
She peeled off her extra layers, replaced Hal’s sweater with a red crewneck of her own, brushed her hair, then let herself out of her room. As she emerged on to the landing, she paused to look down on the chequerboard entrance hall. She could see Hal talking with a tall, dark-haired woman she kind of recognised. It took a moment to place her, then she remembered. The Place des Deux Rennes the night she arrived, leaning against the wall, smoking.
‘How about that,’ she muttered to herself.
Hal’s face lit up as she approached.
‘Hi,’ she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, then offering her hand to Dr O’Donnell. ‘I’m Meredith. Sorry to keep you waiting.’
The woman’s eyes narrowed, clearly having trouble placing her.
‘We exchanged a couple of words the night of the funeral,’ Meredith said, helping her out. ‘Outside the pizzeria in the square?’
‘We did?’Then her face relaxed. ‘That’s right.’
‘I’ll get us coffee brought to the bar,’ Hal said, leading the way. ‘It will be quiet enough for us to talk there.’
Meredith and Dr O’Donnell followed him through, Meredith asking the older woman polite questions to break the ice. How long she’d lived in Rennes-les-Bains, what her connection with the area was, what she did for a living? Usual sort of stuff.
Shelagh O’Donnell answered easily enough, but there was a nervous tension behind everything she said. She was very thin. Her eyes were constantly in motion and she repeatedly rubbed her fingertips against her thumb. Meredith placed her at not more than early thirties, but she had the lined skin of someone older. Meredith could see why the police might not have taken her late-night observations seriously.
They sat at the same table in the corner that they had occupied the previous evening with Hal’s uncle. The atmosphere was very different in the daytime. It was hard to summon the memory of wine and cocktails from the night before given the smell of beeswax polish and fresh flowers on the bar and a stack of boxes waiting to be unpacked.
‘Merci,’ Hal said, as the waitress put the tray of coffee in front of them.
There was a pause while he poured. Dr O’Donnell took hers black. As she stirred in her sugar, Meredith noticed the same red scars on her wrists she’d seen first time round, and wondered what had happened to cause them.
‘Before anything,’ Hal said, ‘I want to thank you for agreeing to see me.’
Meredith was relieved he sounded calm, collected and rational.
‘I knew your father. He was a good man, a friend. But, I’ve got to tell you, I really don’t have anything more I can tell you.’
‘I understand,’ Hal replied, ‘but if you could just bear with me while I run through things. I appreciate the accident was more than a month ago, but there are things about the investigation I’m not happy with. I was hoping you might be able to tell me a little about the actual night. I think the police said you thought you had heard something? ’
Shelagh darted her eyes to Meredith, then to Hal, then away again. ‘They’re still saying Seymour went off the road because he was drunk?’
‘That’s what I find hard to accept. I just can’t see Dad doing that.’
Shelagh picked at a thread on her pants. Meredith could see how nervous she was.
‘How did you meet Hal’s father?’ she said, hoping to give her a bit of confidence.
Hal looked surprised at her interruption, but Meredith gave a tiny shake of the head, so he let her run with it.
Dr O’Donnell smiled. It transformed her face and, for a moment, Meredith could see how attractive she would be if she were less beaten down by life.
‘That night in the square, you asked me what bien-aimé meant.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, Seymour was just that. Someone everyone liked. Everyone respected him, too, even if they didn’t really know him. He was always polite, courteous to waiters, shopkeepers, treated everybody with respect, unlike …’ She broke off. Meredith and Hal exchanged a look, both thinking the same thing – that Shelagh was comparing Seymour to Julian Lawrence. ‘He wasn’t here much, of course,’ she continued quickly, ‘but I got to know him when …’
She paused and messed with a button on her jacket.
‘Yes?’ encouraged Meredith. ‘You got to know him when . . . ?’
Shelagh sighed. ‘I went through a . . . difficult time in my life a couple of years back. I was working on an archaeological dig not far from here, in the Sabarthès mountains, and got drawn into something. Made some bad decisions.’ She paused. ‘The long and the short of it is, things have been difficult since then. My health’s not so good, so I can only manage a few hours a week, doing a little valuation work at the ateliers in Couiza.’ She stopped again. ‘I came to Rennes-les-Bains to live about eighteen months ago now. I have a friend, Alice, who lives in a village not far from here, Los Seres, with her husband and daughter, so it was a logical place to come.’
Meredith recognised the name. ‘Los Seres is where the author Audric Baillard came from, right?’
Hal raised his eyebrows.
‘I was reading a book of his earlier. Up in my room. One of your dad’s vide-grenier bargains.’
Now he smiled, obviously pleased she’d remembered.
‘That’s the man,’ Shelagh said. ‘My friend Alice knew him well.’ Her eyes darkened. ‘I met him too.’
Meredith could see from the look on Hal’s face that the conversation had brought something back to him, but he didn’t say anything.
‘The point is, I had been having problems. Drinking too much.’ Shelagh turned to Hal. ‘I met your dad in a bar. In Couiza actually. I was tired, I’d probably had one too many. We got talking. He was kind, a little worried about me. Insisted he drive me back to Rennes-les-Bains. Nothing dodgy about it. Next morning, he turned up and took me back to Couiza to pick up my car.’ She paused. ‘Never mentioned it again, but after that, he always popped in when he was over here from England.’
Hal nodded. ‘So you don’t believe he would have got behind the wheel if he was in no state to drive?’
Shelagh shrugged. ‘I can’t say for certain, but no, I just can’t see it.’
Meredith still thought they were both a little naïve. Plenty of people said one thing and did another, but Shelagh’s evident admiration and respect for Hal’s father impressed her all the same.
‘The police told Hal that you think you heard the accident, but didn’t realise what it was until the next morning,’ she said gently. ‘Is that right?’
Shelagh raised her coffee cup to her mouth with a shaky hand, took a couple of sips, then put it back in the saucer with a rattle.
‘To be honest, I don’t know what I heard. If it was connected at all.’
‘Go on.’
‘Definitely something, not the usual screech of brakes, or tyres when people take the bend too fast, but just a kind of rumbling, I guess.’ She paused. ‘I was listening to John Martyn, Solid Air. It’s pretty mellow, but even so I wouldn’t have heard the sound outside if it hadn’t been in the pause between the end of one track and the start of the next.’
‘What time was this?’
‘About one or thereabouts. I got up and looked out of the window, but I couldn’t see anything at all. It was completely dark, completely quiet. I just assumed the car had gone past. It was only in the morning when I saw the police and ambulance down at the river that I wondered.’
Hal’s face made it clear he didn’t know where Shelagh was going with this. Meredith, however, did.
‘Wait up,’ she said, ‘let me get this straight. You’re saying you looked out and there were no headlights. Right?’
Shelagh nodded.
‘And you told the police this?’
Hal was looking from one to the other. ‘I’m not sure I see why this is so significant.’
‘It might not be,’ Meredith said quickly. ‘It’s just weird. First, even if your father was way over the limit – I’m not saying he was – would he really be driving with no lights ?’
Hal frowned. ‘But if the car went over the bridge into the water, they could have been smashed.’
‘Sure, but from what you said earlier, it wasn’t particularly badly damaged.’ She carried on. ‘Also, according to what the police told you, Hal, Shelagh heard a screech of brakes, et cetera, right?’
He nodded.
‘Except Shelagh’s just told us that’s precisely what she didn’t hear.’
‘I still don’t—’
‘Two things. First, why is the police report inaccurate? Second – and, I admit, this is speculation – if your father did lose control on the bend and went over, surely there would have been (a) more noise and (b) something to see. I can’t believe all the lights would have blown.’
Hal’s expression started to change. ‘Are you suggesting the car might have been rolled over the edge? Rather than driven?’
‘It’s an explanation,’ Meredith said.
For a moment they stared at each other, their roles reversed. Hal sceptical, Meredith building a case.
‘There is something else,’ Shelagh put in. They both turned to her, for a moment almost having forgotten she was there. ‘When I turned in, maybe a quarter of an hour later, I heard another car on the road. Because of earlier, it made me look out.’
‘And?’ said Hal.
‘It was a blue Peugeot, heading south in the direction of Sougraigne. It only occurred to me in the morning that this was after the accident, about one thirty by then. If they’d come through the town, the driver couldn’t have failed to see the car crashed into the river. Why didn’t they notify the police then?’
Meredith and Hal looked at one another, thinking of the car parked round the back in the staff lot.
‘How could you be sure it was a blue Peugeot?’ Hal asked, keeping his voice level. ‘It was dark.’
Shelagh flushed. ‘It’s the exact same type and model as my car. Everyone’s got one round here,’ she said defensively. ‘Besides, there’s a streetlamp outside my bedroom window.’
‘What did the police say when you told them?’
‘They didn’t seem to think it was important.’ She glanced at the door. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to make a move.’
She stood up. Meredith and Hal did the same.
‘Look,’ he said, pushing his hands into his pockets, ‘I know this is a terrible imposition, but is there any way I could persuade you to come to the police station in Couiza with me? Tell them what you’ve just told us.’
Shelagh started to shake her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve already made a statement.’
‘I know. But if we went together . . .’ he persisted. ‘I’ve seen the accident report and most of what you’ve told me isn’t in the file.’ He pushed his fingers through his mop of hair. ‘I’ll run you over there?’ He fixed her with his blue gaze. ‘I just want to get to the bottom of it. For my dad’s sake.’
From the anguished expression on her face, Meredith could see how hard Shelagh was finding it. She clearly wanted nothing to do with the police. But her affection for Hal’s father won out. She gave a sharp nod.
Hal sighed with relief. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much. I’ll pick you up at, say, twelve. Give you the chance to get things sorted. Is that convenient?’
Shelagh nodded. ‘I have a couple of urgent errands to run this morning – it’s why I was early coming up here – but I’ll be home by eleven.’
‘Right you are. And home is?’
Shelagh gave her address. They all shook hands, a little awkward in the circumstances, then made their way back to the lobby. Meredith headed back to her room, leaving Hal to walk Dr O’Donnell to her car.
Neither of them heard the sound of another door – the door separating the bar from the offices at the back – click shut.
